Lab Partners
by hatsumiyo momichi
Summary: Tavros is completely against animal cruelty, and refuses to do a science experiment. Good thing Gamzee steps up when he seems to be unable to get through his little rebellion. - A gamtav human!stuck highschool AU, in which I attempt to be funny.
1. Chapter 1

You hate this sort of situation. You hate being in a class in which none of your friends are at. You were lucky enough this year to have most classes with Aradia, and the rest with Nepeta, so you weren't exactly alone in any other class besides Science Class. But it was in this very same class that you usually had to pick a partner to do the experiments with. And you have no friends here.

You had to endure 2 experiments already in which the teacher pronounced the so dreaded words "pick a lab partner" in which you were able to just look around awkwardly, hoping someone else would notice you, and happily wish to pair up with you. You never had such luck though, and the teacher usually had to speak up and ask if anyone didn't already have a lab partner, and told them to pair up with you. It wasn't a fun thing to live through. Everyone in the classroom would go quiet and stare at you, maybe not with malice, but with curiosity for who was the kid with no friends in class. You knew it wasn't such a big deal. You still couldn't help the way your cheeks burned and your stomach churned with embarrassment. Damn school. Fuck experiments and lab partners.

You are torn out of your fleeting troubled thoughts by the teacher's voice, and you get as ready as ever to start feeling uneasy after his death sentence.

"Alright class, please be quiet._ Be quiet_." He lifts his arms in the air with a deep frown, eyeing the group of kids in the back that apparently didn't want to shut up. They did so immediately after one of them noticed the death glare. "Miss Peixes will hand out the worksheets as soon as you switch seats and ready to go." He takes a look around the classroom as if he is deep in thought, eyes slightly squinted, and he finally continues giving directions. "I will be pairing you up this time." You raise your eyebrows in surprise just as the rest of the class groaned in disagreement. He begins to speak louder to be heard over the whining. "You guys were incredibly loud last week, and you barely even finished the lab and followed instructions. I don't want that to be a recurring thing, so I will chose who you will be working with." He says with a final tone, and everyone becomes quiet as they wait for their names to be called, none too happy with the decision.

The teacher walks back to his desk and picks up a sheet of paper, reading the names fleetingly before starting to call out names, his eyes raising from the paper from time to time to look at the students over his glasses.

You feel relieved and anxious at the same time. You don't have to stand awkwardly while you wait for someone to notice you, but then again you _did_ have to possibly endure a butt hurt kid that would look at you funny while they whined that they wanted to go back to sitting with their friends, instead of a lame loser like you.

You almost miss your name being called as you stressed over this issue, and when you lifted your head up, you realize he had already said your partner's name as well, and you immediately freaked out. You didn't hear a thing, and now you don't know who it was, you don't know if you have to stand up and go to their desk, you don't know-

"What's up, motherfucker." You almost jump as someone plops down on the seat right next to yours carelessly. You turn your head to see who it is, and you come face to face with a dude that sat at the very back of the classroom. You don't really know the guy in person yet, but you know his name, Gamzee Makara, and his so popular nickname, the juggalo stoner. He obviously doesn't go by that nickname. Not that he cares much what people thinks of him, or what they say behind his back.

"Oh, um, hi." You say, and hesitantly stretch out a hand to him to shake his. You wonder if that was a weird thing to do from the way he looked at it for a second, as if he suddenly didn't know what to do with it. But he eventually grinned quite stupidly and took your hand in his, lazily shaking it up and down before letting go. "You're, Gamzee, right?" You ask despite knowing it for certain.

"That's the name, brother." He chuckles quietly before lifting his eyes to receive a sheet of paper that Feferi held out to him.

"I'm Tavros." You provide, and try to take a peek at the worksheet in his hands.

"I know." He says simply, and smiles at you as he cocks his head.

"Okay. Can I, see that?" you take the paper from his hand as he lets it go, and you begin to read the instructions for the lab in concentration. Your face becomes a true representation of horror when you read just what the lab is about. You both have to _dissect a frog_.

Did the teacher even mention that before the class started? Did he even warn his students? You are certain he did not. You would have told him there was _no fucking way_ you would ever agree to participate in such a thing. You take a big breath as you try to calm yourself, and you let the paper down. Gamzee takes it back right away, and you watch him slowly raise a bushy eyebrow at the thing. He speaks shortly after.

"Hey, bro..." He begins, and turns the paper in his hands to check the back before scanning the front again. "Is this shit trying to say we gotta go all up and take a fucking look at some little frog's guts?" You almost gag. That was a nice way to put it.

"I'm, pretty sure, that's exactly what we are, uh, supposed to do..." You tell him with a worried expression to give him the message you are _**so**_not down with the idea.

"Well, fuck." He huffs out a humorless laugh and looks at you with a frown. "That shit ain't cool." He looks serious. You don't think you have ever seen this guy even try to feign a serious expression. You nod in agreement before you notice someone is by your desk once again, and you see Feferi place a jar with a frog inside it on your table.

The little animal is looking at you. The little animal is alive. You purse your lips as you hear another person leave a metallic tray with some surgical instruments on your desk before walking away.

"Hey little fucker!" Gamzee takes the jar from you and lifts it up to his face, his long nose almost pressing against the glass. "Fucking cute." You swallow thickly. You see the teacher stand in front of the class and hear him clear his throat. You lift a hand in the air to call his attention. He ignores it as he begins to speak.

"Very well." You keep your hand up in the air, hearing as Gamzee cooed at the little thing, hearing it croak quietly in response. The teacher began to give some extra instructions before finally giving in to your insistent hand. "Mr Nitram, all questions after I finish giving instructions." He says, and without another glance in your direction, continues to speak. You lower your hand and look at Gamzee.

"I can't do it." You inform him, and he looks puzzled for a moment as he tears his eyes away from the jar in front of his face. He seems to understand after a few seconds. "It's a... living thing..." You continue. "I can't." He nods before turning his eyes to the jar again. You want to add some sort of passionate speech about you being vegan and this whole experiment going against everything you believe in and how terribly awful the whole idea of killing an animal in class is, but you refrain from doing so. Not that you have it in you to start ranting to a stranger. You aren't one to rant too much at all, actually.

"I'm not down with this shit either. Fuck this, man, this little motherfucker had done no wrong at no one, shit ain't any kind of fair." He frowns deeply as he shakes his head, and leaves the frog on the table to cross his arms.

You hear the teacher tell the class to start, and the sound of light chatter begins to fill the room, the noise of a jar opening and metallic utensils coming from all directions. You cover your face with your hands. Those poor animals. There's no way you can stop your classmates from doing the experiment. You can hear some of them even laughing excitedly at the prospect of seeing some frog's insides. You hear Gamzee start tapping the glass and say 'hi' to the amphibian yet again.

You hear some more laughter coming from a table close by. You hear a kid talk about how he wanted to see the lungs. You feel so sick. You suddenly feel a bony hand grasp your shoulder, and you uncover your face to look at Gamzee.

"You feelin' alright?" You shake your head. "Damn." He purses his lips for a moment, and then he raises his voice to speak. "Mr. Ampora!" You see him lift an arm in the air to call the teacher's attention as if his loud voice hadn't interrupted enough. The teacher groans in annoyment from his desk, and you aren't exactly sure why. "Me and my bro here don't wanna do this shit." You gulp and wish you could hide under the desk.

"Mr. Makara." There is a serious warning tone in his voice. "Language."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." You can feel everyone staring at you and Gamzee now. Your ears are getting uncomfortably hot. The teacher is nodding now, apparently letting Gamzee off the hook with the cursing. Probably only this time. You hope he can control his mouth with his next words.

"Can you explain now, please?" Gamzee seems to think his words through for a second before elaborating.

"Me and my bro here, Tavros, don't wanna go and cut up this little... dude. That's all kinds of sick."

"...I see."

"I mean look at him!" He lifts the jar a little higher and points a finger at it, moving the frog just a little in his hands. "He ain't hurting nobody. Why do we gotta hurt _/him_/?"

"We are doing an experiment." He sais simply.

"No, no, this ain't cool, I ain't about to touch this frog for anything else besides some wicked petting or some sh- stuff." Gamzee is lowering the jar to the table when he suddenly loosens his grip on it by accident. You gasp when the jar falls flat on the table and rolls on the desk before crashing down on the floor.

"Holy fucking shit!" You cover your face with your hands again, this time out of profound embarrassment. Why.

"Mr. Makara!" Now you hear everyone laughing at the show, your eyes closed tightly behind your palms, and you feel as Gamzee moves the table to stand up and probably try to catch the frog. You hear more laughter.

"Sorr- Fuck!" You lower your hands to take a peek at what he is doing, and you see him shove a finger in his mouth and suck on it. You doubt the frog bit him. You are pretty sure he just cut his finger with the glass.

"God, Gamzee." You say as you stand up to help him, almost squeaking when you see the frog jumping towards you, afraid that you would step on it and kill it. You turn your head to watch it run away, and the table nearby catches your eye. There is an already dead frog sliced up on the table. You try to suppress a gag as you bend over yourself, clasping a hand over your mouth.

"Mr. Makara..." You hear the teacher try to control his tone of voice.

"Where'd it go?" Gamzee takes his index out of his mouth and looks around the floor before trying to stand up.

"To the principal's office. Now."

"Wait, wait, I got this." He quickly walks past the desk in the direction he had seen the frog jump towards.

"I said now!" He barks this time. Gamzee groans in what could be annoyance, and you gag loudly when you become stupid enough to take another glance at the horrible murder table. "And take Mr. Nitram to the infirmary." He adds with a tinge of amusement in his voice, and you soon feel Gamzee wrap an arm around your shoulders and begin you walk you out the classroom, laughter beginning to grow even louder all around you.

When you are finally out of the classroom and the door closes behind you, Gamzee leans you against the wall and holds your face in his hands.

"You alright, motherfucker?" He asks, violating your personal space without even flinching, and you nod vigorously just to get him to back away.

"Yes." He breathes out a soft laugh that tickles your own mouth and lets you go.

"Sorry. Shit got kinda crazy in there." You swallow hard, both thanks to the nervousness his closeness made you feel, and because you still feel like you could puke right this very second.

"You don't look okay, though." He adds after taking another look at you, and begins to walk in the direction of the infirmary. "Come on, bro." You nod and hesitantly begin to follow him, hearing your teacher start to scold his students to get them to shut up already.

You find the way to the infirmary to be excruciatingly long, and once you are there, the nurse quickly makes you sit on a bed and lay down, telling you to stay still and not move your head. Gamzee leans on the door frame, watching you before the nurse tells him to either get out or actually get inside. He chooses the latter of course, and sits on the bed carefully to avoid moving you. The nurse soon places a cold and moist towel on your forehead, and you close your eyes while you will the nausea to go away. You breathe in deeply, exhale deeply, and repeat.

"What happened?" She asks after a moment, directing the question at Gamzee as she leaned on the wall with her arms crossed. Gamzee spoke for you.

"Had to get ourselves out of science class. We had to..." You open your eyes to look at him just as he ran his thumb across his neck in a slicing motion. "A frog." You close your eyes back again and try to think of something else.

"Aw..." She sounds equally amused and sympathetic. She soon moves from the wall and takes a seat on a desk not far from the bed you're at, and you hear her begin to hit a keyboard with her fingers; for some reason you guess she isn't working. You guess she doesn't have much to do around here anyways.

You feel Gamzee's hand find yours and you open your eyes with a frown to look at him, but you don't pull your hand away. You don't really want to move a muscle anyways in fear of the nausea getting worse.

"You got long nails." He observes with a smile, and runs the pad of his thumb over all your nails. You can't help but chuckle lightly. You like to keep your nails longer than most guys, but no one really ever points it out.

"I do." You confirm the obvious and feel his hand linger there for a second more before pulling away. You want to say he's probably a little touchy, but you don't want to judge him yet. It's not like you mind touchy people anyways.

You sigh deeply and let your eyelids close again, and you try to relax as much as you can, feeling the nausea start to dissipate.

He seems to remember he had a little cut on his finger, and asks the nurse if she has any bandaids.

You don't even notice when you start to fall asleep and Gamzee gets off the bed, probably to face the consequences of his foul language. If he even intends to follow the teacher's orders.


	2. Chapter 2

**I guess you won't see this note unless you are a new reader but, wow, I am so sorry about the messed up previous submission. It's all fixed now, and it can be read properly. Sorry again! You guys must have been so confused haha.**

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><p>You hadn't really noticed he was in most of your classes before. Which is the reason why you frowned in confusion when he tapped your shoulder from behind as you sat down on your usual desk in math class, making you turn your head around to look at him. You were sure it was another guy who sat right behind you. A John maybe? You were 100% certain it wasn't this Gamzee dude, if he even actually had this class with you. And you were 100% wrong.<p>

"Hey motherfucker, how's your stomach all up and feeling now?" You take a good look at him as you lick your chapped lips. His strange clown makeup looks neater than yesterday. You think he probably just put it on a few hours ago, considering it is barely 9 AM.

"I'm, feeling great, actually. Um, thank you for, taking me to the nurse, yesterday. And... sort of, help me with the lab thing..." You say with a smile, making sure he got the message that you were actually very thankful for it. He hadn't laughed at you after all, like all the other students. You think it's mainly because he was the one being made fun of, mostly. He smiled at you as a 'you're welcome'. "I also, spoke to the teacher before class, Mr Ampora, that is. And he said he wouldn't give us an F for not participating..." He starts to nod as you finish speaking, raising both of his dark eyebrows.

"Fucking wicked news, bro!" You chuckle at how truly relieved he looks. "Can't afford another bad grade in science. I'm barely passing that blasphemous class."

"Uh… Really? But, we have been in school for, barely two months..." You see him nod with a chuckle.

"Yeah."

"I mean, you still have, a pretty good chance at actually passing the class, if you, uh, study... I guess." You shrug and he looks like he is giving it some thought before shaking his head and waving a hand at you, dismissing the idea completely. He doesn't say anything else after that. "Uh..." You change the subject to the class you are actually at right now. "Did you do, your homework?" You ask just to avoid the uncomfortable silence you thought might take over, and he frowns slightly at your question before pursing his lips.

"Shit." He mutters as he looks at you, and soon begins to chuckle yet again. "You think he's gonna want to check that shit? Like, individually."

"He always does, so..."

"Goddamn." He frowns again before reaching for his backpack, picking it up from the floor and opening it after he put it on his lap. You notice it is basically empty and the dark purple cloth of it is pretty worn out, holes and stains visible all over it asides from the scattered writing with black sharpie that looks like it was done by more than one person. There are also a few dicks drawn on it. You want to laugh at it but he quickly drops it to the floor without any care for it and places his notebook on the table, a chewed up pencil in his left hand. He opens the notebook up and tries to find a certain page, which you guess is his undone homework. You notice there are a bunch of pages he skipped that were left unwritten. You notice there are a bunch of pages exclusively dedicated to drawings that you don't get a good enough look at as he flips through the pages like to judge if they are good or not. You decide to offer some help with the undone homework issue.

"You can, uh, copy my homework, by the way… If you want." You let him know, picking up your own notebook and waving it in front of you slightly. He lifts his eyes from the page, setting them on you, and grins widely after just a second.

"Fucking bitchtits." You have never let anyone copy your homework before, and you feel rather naughty when you hand him your pristine notebook, which you know is incredibly lame. You still bite your lips and look like a bad kid caught stealing the last and best cookie in the cookie jar, though. He doesn't notice obviously, being too busy trying to copy your work as fast as he could with his sloppy handwriting. He is done just as Aradia arrives to the classroom and sits beside you, and watches Gamzee give you back your notebook.

"Hello." She greets you two, giving Gamzee a smile. You can basically hear Gamzee smiling when he replies.

"Yo, sister." 

* * *

><p>You are walking out of English class with Nepeta when you spot him down the hall, taking something out of his locker. You didn't have the same class as him during that period, and you had been silently wondering if you had any more classes with him after lunch.<p>

He spots you as you walk towards the cafeteria, and waves a hand at you before doing this weird jog thing towards you and Nepeta.

"Hey, I was gonna go all up and look for you, motherfucker." He says, and you try to not look so surprised. "Wanna have lunch with this here mother fucker and the gang?" You raise an eyebrow anyways, and look at Nepeta. Is he really asking you that? Yes he was. You had only started speaking yesterday and he seemed determined to befriend you, apparently. He was a really friendly person, to say the least. But you weren't sure if Nepeta was comfortable with the idea of having lunch with him and his "gang".

"Oh, yes! That would be most purrfect, Gamzee!" She answers for you as she claps her hands together, and you wonder in silence why you had no idea that she knew him.

"Fuck yeah, come right on and follow me." He begins to lead the way, not waiting for you to agree as well.

Turns out Nepeta knew him because he was friends with Terezi and Karkat, two people you knew she was pretty fond of, and you were acquainted with. She was kind enough to let you know this after you gave her a quizzical look as the clown walked ahead and led the way.

Once Gamzee stopped at a table, you were quick to speak before he invited you to take a seat.

"I, uh, will be right back. I have to look for someone, if that's okay…" He nods and you turn back around, eyeing the cafeteria before spotting Aradia in the distance, sitting on your usual table with her tray on its surface while her own eyes searched for you and Nepeta. You made your way towards her and informed her the situation, and her smile widened when she took a look at the table you were pointing at. You knew her smile was due to the expectation of sitting close to a certain person that you knew she had been crushing on for quite some time. She stood up with her tray and followed you around, waiting for you to take your own tray with food before heading towards the new table.

When you got back to where Gamzee and Nepeta were at, you discovered that while Nepeta had saved a seat for Aradia, Gamzee had saved a seat for you right next to him. You took a seat almost in a hurry, and picked up your peanut butter and jelly sandwich straight away.

"We have new guests!" A girl you recognize to be Terezi spoke up after a few moments, turning her head in your direction. You knew she was blind from what Nepeta had told you, so that action was rather creepy.

"Way to state the obvious, Terezi." A chubby boy with an obnoxiously loud voice waved at you and Aradia, a mild frown present on his face, which made the friendly action not seem all that friendly after all. "Hi."

"Hey what's up? I'm Sollux, this asshole is Karkat, and she's Terezi." Sollux. You know he's the guy Aradia has a crush on. He smiled to both of you before stuffing a fork inside his mouth, filled with salad. You take note that It was hard to not notice his heavy lisp.

"Uh, hi. I'm Tavros." You wave at the whole table with an unsure smile, and Aradia did the same, her smile as bright as ever.

"My name is Aradia." You knew Nepeta didn't need an introduction.

"So how come you guys are sitting here?" Sollux was the one to ask, stabbing some lettuce with his fork.

"Uh-"

"I all up and done thinking we could use some more company, so I asked this motherfucker if he wanted to tag along. Honk!" You chuckle briefly at the little addition at the end of the sentence, but kept quiet once you noticed it apparently was a usual thing, since no one else blinked an eye at it.

"Like this fucking table isn't filled with enough douchebags as it is."

"Watch your manners Karkles, you wouldn't want to scare them away that easily." Terezi ran her tongue over her braces before aiming it at Karkat and letting it wiggle in the air. You aren't entirely sure if that's weird or not.

"Close your fucking mouth, Terezi."

"No." She began to giggle as she slowly began to stand up, bending over the table in an attempt to get her face close to the guy sitting across from her, her tongue wiggling about restlessly.

"Stop it!" Karkat put a hand in her face and pushed her back into her seat, all the while Terezi kept on giggling.

"Sour puss." You couldn't avoid letting a giggle of your own escape your mouth, and Terezi, sitting on her chair again, stuck her tongue at you instead. Karkat shot you a glare for laughing, and you decide you probably shouldn't laugh again. At least not at him.

Terezi kept teasing Karkat over the table as Sollux began a conversation, Nepeta and Aradia being the ones to speak since you were much more interested in eating your lunch than in speaking. Gamzee seemed a little distracted before he apparently remembered he was at a lunch table and picked up his own sandwich to to eat it.

"You want some Faygo?" You turn your face to him as you keep on chewing.

"What?" You ask as he uncaps a beverage he had in his bony hands this whole time, the label reading just that: 'Faygo'.

"You want some?" He offers again, handing you the fizzling stuff anyways. The sweet scent of grapes reaches your nose as you bring it to your lips, and you take a nice swing of the stuff before handing it back with a chuckle.

"It tastes, very sweet."

"This blissful elixir is the best fucking shit in the world. A motherfucking miracle." He informs you with a proud nod as he lifts the bottle to his own lips, and you watch him chug down half of the bottle in only a few seconds. Damn. You wonder if his throat is burning from the bubbles. You hear him burp out the gas purposefully loud, and you begin to laugh just as you take a bite of your sandwich. Karkat interrupts his loud chatter with Terezi for a moment to yell at Gamzee and let him know just how "absolutely fucking disgusting" he is, and you just smile at the way Gamzee honks as a response a few times and winks at you playfully.

You both begin a conversation of your own, the main topic being yesterday's frog incident. You both wonder if the little thing is okay. You both wonder if maybe it managed to escape and somehow got out of the school, and is now somewhere in the scarce grass around the area. You prefer to think so. Gamzee seems pretty positive that that is exactly what happened at least.

You haven't had this much fun during lunch since middle school.


	3. Chapter 3

You start to spend so much time with Gamzee that you are tempted to start considering him your best friend. But you refrain from doing so, even after weeks of hanging out with him almost everyday, seeing as he constantly tells you Karkat is /his/ best friend. You try to not get bothered by that; he obviously isn't trying to make you feel bad on purpose. He never tries to consciously hurt your feelings, and you know it. You actually appreciate how nice he has been to you since you started talking, so you don't feel like you have the right to complain.

Right now he is being too nice.

"Bro, I don't got no idea why the fuck someone would go all up and drop such lies onto your motherfucking ears." Gamzee says with a surprisingly serious tone of voice that matches the frown on his face. "I bet your rapping is the most mother fucking miraculous thing that ever did take place in this world. I don't even need to listen to those ill beats to know you're one motherfucking dope ryda." He cracks a smile at you, probably to convince you that he is being honest. You really don't doubt he /is/ being 100% honest, even if he hasn't heard you rap in his life. You can't help but chuckle at that; his opinions on the matter are simply the nicest you have ever heard, not to mention absolutely sweet.

"That is, pretty much what I like to think, or at least, what I wish I could actually believe." You tell him with a shrug and a look to the side, your confidence wavering, and he responds by lifting a hand to your face to cup your cheek with it.

"Don't motherfucking doubt your own skills bro." He smiles lazily, his dopey half lidded eyes looking down at you as he rubs his thumb over your skin lightly. You are still not used to how touchy he is. You don't want to complain though, since the warm touch makes your skin tickle and feel very good, even if you tell yourself you're not interested in guys and the reaction is merely biological. You truly believe that. There's no doubt that can get through your head, regarding this issue.

You giggle and step away from his touch, and he simply lets his arm hang by his side again. "Aw man, now I got my craving going on for hearing some of those wicked rhymes of yours. Maybe you can check my own repertoire if we get any kind motherfucking chance." You lift your eyebrows, trying to pretend the thought doesn't make you /way/ too excited.

"That would be, uh, miraculous, as you would probably say..." You say with a chuckle, and bite down on your lips to stifle your smile. You are totally failing at feigning a normal amount of excitement. You briefly wonder how the topic of rapping hadn't been brought up earlier, seeing as apparently he loved it as much as you did.

"Honk!" He says obnoxiously loud, and you notice a few students turn their heads towards you and chuckle with what you guess is some kind of second hand embarrassment. "Bro, we can get our going to my place right the fuck now and get this shit done!" He doesn't wait for you to reply before picking up your backpack from the floor and starting to lead the way towards the exit of the school. You watch him walk away as you just stand there trying to think of a reason why you should decline the offer, but you realize you actually have nothing better to do, and it couldn't hurt to spend some time at a friend's house, especially since you haven't had the opportunity to hang out at his place under any pretext before. To be fair, he hasn't visited your house either. You think your dad probably wouldn't mind you spending a few hours away from home after school, so you let another smile creep on your face as you begin to actually follow him, trying to match his quick pace. He has really damn long legs, and you are tempted to tell him to please slow down.

You both go through the heavy doors that lead outside, and he stops by the metallic rail of the stairs before letting your backpack and his own fall to the ground carelessly.

"Hold on motherfucker, I gotta get my wait on for my brother. He's got the car that's gonna drive us home. Shit, this is gonna be all kind of wicked tits!" Brother. You had no idea he had a brother that went to the same school. You briefly wonder what he looks like, and wonder if he has the same thick, curly black hair that rules Gamzee's head. For some reason that's the part of his body you're usually caught up on when you think of him anyways. You then wonder if he also wears clown makeup, which you think is a possibility, but you aren't so sure.

Your questions are answered after only a few minutes of silently waiting.

Gamzee's face suddenly lights up, and he raises and arm in the air, looking behind you in the distance. "Whoop whoop!" He yells, and you make a funny face before fully turning around and seeing a tall, lanky guy approaching you two, a girl walking by his side and similarly strange makeup covering his long face. The girl strikes you as incredibly familiar for a reason you can't pin point yet. The other guy doesn't respond to Gamzee's greeting verbally, but instead raises both of his arms in the air with a smile, and points at Gamzee in a rather silly way.

"Hi Gamzee!" The girl, who is right in front of you now along with the guy, speaks in a voice so loud it seems as if Gamzee is several feet away instead of right in front of her. She then turns to look at you, and you quickly lift your hand to wave at her slightly, "Hi!".

"Uh, hi..." You frown a little and lick your lips over, quickly trying to make out who she reminds you of.

"What's up sister?" Gamzee asks the girl and she stares at him for a moment, concentrated, before replying.

"Not much! What's your name?" She looks at you again, and opens her eyes a little bit wider as she turns her attention to your lips. Your face suddenly lights up once you finally remember who she is. You had only seen her once, and Nepeta never really talks about her, but you are pretty sure this girl is her sister.

"I'm, Tavros." She frowns a little after you speak, and looks at who you are now certain is Gamzee's brother. The guy quickly raises his hands in front of himself and begins moving them along with his fingers, and you suddenly realize she is deaf. That explains why she speaks so loud. She probably can't regulate her voice's volume, and prefers to speak loudly instead of speaking too low for anyone to hear. You think about asking Gamzee how she manages to be in classes later on, or maybe even Nepeta, since you're not sure if that's a rude thing to ask her right now.

"What a purrfectly cool name!" She replies to you, "Mine is Meulin! You know Kurloz yet? Are you Gamzee's furrend? Wait... You haven't..." She frowns deeply for a moment before smiling quite creepily at Gamzee. "Did you finally get a boyfriend?! OMG. O. M. G. I can't believe this, hi!" You look at Gamzee straight away and see his eyes widen before he breaks out laughing, hitting Meulin's arm playfully. He looks at you then and smiles.

"That ain't playin' nice sister, don't wanna make my ninja here all uncomfortable and shit." You purse your lips, hoping the joke isn't actually on you seeing as you are the only one not laughing. Well, you and the guy who's name is apparently Kurloz, who actually just breathed out loudly through his nose and grinned. "He's just a bro." You see Meulin give him an sceptical look before nodding to herself. You do feel a little bit uncomfortable as Meulin looks at you with slightly squinted eyes, as if she is thinking hard about something. You are also unsure how you feel about the sentence 'finally get a boyfriend', since it had been directed at Gamzee, and he hadn't quite answered the way you had expected him to for a moment. He didn't complain that Meulin implied he was gay in the least of ways and had instead focused on denying you were his partner.

Kurloz waves a hand to call everyone's attention and begins to sign something that you obviously cannot understand, and Gamzee adds an "okay, okay" in reply before bending down and grabbing your backpack again, leading the way down the stairs and towards the almost now empty parking lot. "Come on bro, we gotta get our hurry on." You follow him, Kurloz and Meulin doing the same.

The ride towards Gamzee's house is loud, Meulin doing most of the talking (or yelling) as she showered you with questions since she has never met you before and seemed very interested in getting to know Gamzee's new 'furrend'. You take the chance to ask her about Nepeta and make sure your hypothesis is right, and she seemed to be extra excited that she was meeting one of her little sister's friends in the flesh.

You quickly learn to reply slower for her, modulating your words well and making sure she understood before beginning another sentence. You picked up that she is Kurloz's girlfriend, that they both met at the hospital -a topic that she didn't elaborate on- and that she has all her classes with Kurloz because he isn't deaf like her, just mute, and he helps her understand a lot of things she couldn't in any other situation, through sign language. You realize that Nepeta probably was well acquainted with Gamzee's brother, and that explained why she knew him even further.

Once you arrive to Gamzee's house you can't avoid the thought that it is the smallest house you have ever been in. Small, and... well, you could very well tell they don't really have a lot of money. You feel slightly ashamed when you suddenly feel pity for Gamzee, thinking that he wouldn't want that at all.

"Come on bro!" He drags you to his room as soon as you get inside, Kurloz and Meulin being left behind in the living room after Gamzee shut the door. He sits down on the floor of his room, leaving the bed all for you, and quickly sets up a radio that immediately starts to blast unbearably loud rap music before he lowers the volume down to something more acceptable. You grin widely and almost squeak before opening your mouth to speak.

"That's... my favorite band." You are sure your face looks very stupid right now, but you can't bring yourself to tone the excitement down. He grins and laughs at your words.

"Fuck yeah, they're the fucking best!" He raises his arms in the air to emphasize just how amazing they are. You see him lower his arms and take a deep breath before you hear him start to rap along with the song that is currently playing. You rapidly follow him into the fun, not missing a single word of the well memorized lyrics, and you both look at each other as if a miracle is taking place right this very second.

He turns the volume down after the song ends, hearing a knock on the door before it opens up. Meulin pops her head inside with flushed cheeks and a wide smile.

"We're going out to the movies, so see you later! It was awesome meeting you, Tavros!" You give her a polite smile and wave a hand at her. "Bye Gamzee! Have fun." She stares at Gamzee for longer than necessary before giggling at something she must have thought and closing the door to leave with Kuloz. You both hear her footsteps as she walks away, and once you hear the front door open and close, Gamzee leans his body forwards as he sits on the floor and speaks in a secretive tone.

"That's a total motherfucking lie, motherfuckers are gonna go and find themselves a nice little place to fuck like kinkiest of rabbits." A full second goes by before you break out laughing, a hand going up to your face to cover your mouth and the blush that is threatening to take over your face. You really didn't want to know that. He starts to laugh too, and you hope he isn't laughing at your childish reaction. "Now, now, my brother, I can't wait a single mother fucking minute more to hear your promised rhymes." He rubs his hands together as he waits for you to reply, and you hesitate for a moment before nodding, letting him know you are ready to go. He immediately begins to create a beat with his own mouth, and you wait a moment before coming up with the perfect opening sentence, and you begin to spill your heart out in the worst set of rhymes you could have ever come up with. And you somehow managed to provide enough bad lyrics to fill in for a minute or so.

The experience proves to be extremely satisfactory, and you end up laughing, your face burning red from excitement and pure happiness. You get ready to create a beat of your own for Gamzee, and watch him bite his lips in anticipation while you try to come up with the best one you could imagine. You cover your mouth with your hand like you have seen rappers do, and try to spit out a nice beat that sucked as much as your rhymes, but that Gamzee considered to be perfect.

He did a horrible job at the lyric spewing as well, but you don't consciously think that for even a single second. You are convinced of the exact opposite.

You both decide you are simply the best rappers out there, and promptly waste the next ten minutes praising one another, complaining that other people just didn't get what good rapping sounded like since they always told you you sucked, and he seems rather glad that you have left behind your insecurity towards the topic enough for you to be honestly bothered by the thought of being told your beats weren't ill enough.

After a while he gets off the floor and opens up his closet, revealing a huge mess of clothes, trash and his personal belongings, and takes out a pair of juggling clubs to entertain you. You notice there is a monocycle stuffed in the back of the coset, and you think to yourself that he takes this clown act very seriously. You wonder if you will ever get the chance to see him ride the thing.

You laugh at the first several attempts he makes of catching the clubs in the air, and then you hurriedly get off the bed to check on him when one of the things hits him in the head by accident. He laughs it off and grabs your hand to get it away from his bruised head. He holds on to your hand for longer than necessary, but lets you go after a moment.

"You should try it out, motherfucker." He says, and hands you one of the juggling clubs that rest on the floor beside him. He stands and helps you up to your feet, holding the other juggling club in his hand. "Alright bro... Now you be very careful with this shit, I'll walk you through it. Shit's as easy as kicking a freshly opened Faygo." You nod hesitantly, feeling the weight of the clubs. They were rather heavy, or at least heavy enough to leave a bruise if you were unlucky enough to hit your head like Gamzee did. But you decide to trust him on this, and offer him a smile that he quickly responds to with a poke on the tip of your nose and a loud "honk!" being exclaimed.

"Alright, I guess I can, give it a try, I mean, it shouldn't be too hard..." He nods rapidly and hands you the other club before cupping both of your busy hands with his, keeping them still before he started to move them, and help you through the basic motions before getting down to the real thing. His hands are cold and a little clammy, and they wrap around the back of yours way too perfectly. You only now notice his hands are not only thin and bony, but also rather big. Yours truly fit perfectly in them.

"You all fine bro?" He asks you then, and you realize you had spaced out while looking down at both of your hands.

"Uh, yes, I'm okay. How do I throw it, without hurting myself, or you?" he gifts you a sweet laugh that you are not sure it even has a reason to be, and he lets go of your hands. He then does his best attempt at teaching you how to throw it, mimicking the action, but ends up failing miserably at the job. Luckily enough, you both were not injured during the long, ridiculously fun session.

You lose track of time until you realize it is now dark outside, and you gasp as soon as you check your phone and see it is nearing 8 PM. You remember you don't really know where you're at, and only know that this place is pretty far from your own house. You don't even know if there are any buses that go towards the general area your house is located at, or where to take it if there is one. He had told you Kurloz wasn't going to be back home early, if he even decided to sleep in the house. You begin to freak out just a bit and worry sick.

"Hey bro, chill out, it's all kinds of cool. You can spend the night here just fine, I can even sleep on the couch if you don't wanna share the bed with this here motherfucker."

"Oh, I... That sounds like a very good idea, actually, if you really don't mind. I wouldn't want you to sleep on your couch, though, this is your house, after all... So I guess, I don't mind sharing." You consciously make the great effort to not associate sleeping together to any kind of possible romantic situation. It would be childish and stupid to do so, or so you think. He gives you this smile that makes you think he had probably thought you would actually take his offer and let him sleep on the couch. He looks glad you didn't do that.

"It's fine all over this bitch, don't you worry 'bout a damn thing. You're more than welcome if you ever wanna crash someplace else besides your own motherfucking bed in the future also."

"Thanks... I guess." You smile lightly and get your phone out of your pocket again, and begin to browse through your contacts to call you father. You step outside Gamzee's room to speak to your dad, and you let him know where you are at, that you won't go back home for the night, and to not worry. You can tell he is rather angry at you for not saying so sooner since he had been already worrying something bad had happened to you, but he soon hung up and let you enjoy your little sleepover.

"Hey dog, you wanna get your watch on to some fucking movie with me?" he says as soon as you enter his room again, seeing him already setting up a DVD player on top of his rather old tv. You nod anyways, despite knowing he was going to set it up either way. You take a seat on his bed with your legs pulled to your chest, your back against the wall, and watch him go about his room searching for something that turned out to be an old blanket that he made into a ball and threw at you. You stretch it out again and pull it over your shoulders, leaving enough fabric for Gamzee to cover his shoulders with it if he decided to sit next to you and share it. He soon turns off the lights, remote control in hand, and jumps on the bed to scoot really close to you, wrapping what he could of the blanket over his own back. "This fucking movie is so full of miracles, I doubt anything can compare to this fine ho-titty work of art." You chuckle at his choice of words and at how passionate he seems to feel towards it, and purse your lips as the menu screen comes on and announces a terrible looking horror movie. You aren't a fan of the genre, but you are sure you can handle it as long as you watch it with Gamzee so close to you. You honestly doubt you will freak out when you are already feeling so comfortable, warm, and safe.

You breathe in deeply as the movie begins and the opening credits start to roll, and you notice Gamzee's scent as it lifted to your nose, warm and so close. You wouldn't qualify the scent to be specifically good, but it wasn't bad either. It was just his scent. You can distinguish the smell of his hair, tangled strands holding on to fruity shampoo despite it needing a serious wash; the nice smell of what would be either cologne or deodorant (you guess it probably is the latter), and the scent of clothes that have been worn previously and were now being used again without a previous wash. And then there's the creamy, strange scent of his face paint. You find the combination to be comforting in some way, seeing as he always smelled like that. Or at least that's the scent you picked up from him during the few close encounters that you have had with him, all of them even happening thanks to Gamzee's lack of sense of personal space.

You watch the whole movie and end up liking it some, and Gamzee quickly removes himself from your side to pop in another CD. It is another horror movie. Another one with clowns being the main theme. You giggle when the menu comes up, and he giggles along, surely not even knowing what he was laughing at. Gamzee's commentary all through this movie was pretty entertaining this time, at least until he suddenly fell asleep. You couldn't help a smile when you noticed his silence was due to his lack of conscience. You looked up to the half way finished movie, and felt his head nuzzle into your shoulder and his hair tickle your face as he shifted even closer to you in his sleep. You decide against getting up now to turn off the television, and instead take the remote from his limp hand and turn it off with the power button. You lean your own head to the side and let it rest on his carefully, hearing him snore softly. You begin to fall asleep, the soothing sound of his rhythmic breathing filling your ears.


	4. Chapter 4

You look to your side as Gamzee sits down beside you, and you see a huge, goofy grin plastered on his face. He is the last one to arrive to the lunch table, and most of you have already eaten at least half of your lunch. Well, except for you, who are a rather slow eater when you're not starving, so your lunch is almost intact. You swallow the mouthful of lettuce in your mouth before asking about his excitement.

"Are you, okay?" You ask with a smirk, and he nods furiously.

"I all up and got a mad fucking wicked idea, bro." He says as he jumps a little on his seat, and then raises his voice to be heard by everyone on the table, above their loud chatter.

"Hey motherfuckers, what do ya'll say about going out to a motherfucking fun location of some sort to hang out and shit?" There is some silence as they look at him before Aradia speaks up.

"What do you have in mind?" She is smiling, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she sets down her napkin.

"Oh, I don't know…" He says, his eyes looking elsewhere for a moment in thought.

"How about we go to the mall?" Sollux says. "I need to buy some CD's and another external hard drive anyways, so..."

"Oh! That sounds like a pawsitively fun idea! Maybe we can watch a movie too?" Nepeta claps her hands together, sudden excitement present on her voice, and Gamzee nods at her with a grin from ear to ear.

"Fuck yeah, that sounds like a dope ass plan."

"Then I'm going too." Terezi sticks her tongue towards Nepeta before aiming it at Gamzee. You wonder why a blind girl would want to watch a movie, but you keep your thoughts to yourself.

"Sure, what the hell, it's not like I had anything better to do." Karkat says. "But we're fucking watching '_It's him or the man next door_', or I'm going to seriously reconsider it." Karkat sounds serious. Terezi begins to laugh purposefully loud as she wiggles her tongue at him.

"I am not spending my Friday watching a lame Rom Com, Karkles. Even the title sounds absolutely ridiculous"

"You better just suck it up, Pyrope."

"I think it might be fun!" Nepeta sides with Karkat, and you can't help a giggle at that. Of course she would; and for more than one reason.

"Maybe we can watch '_Tomb Raider 4_'."

"No." Aradia seems a little disappointed at her choice being dismissed like that by Karkat, but she quickly recovers.

"Jesus Christ, we're not going to be able to please every fucking body, so let's just go with KK's choice and avoid a fucking massive tantrum from the cheesy 5 year old." Karkat nods and points a hand at Sollux, with an obvious 'there you go' expression despite the slight insult in that. You hear Gamzee chuckle at the show, but soon shares his opinion.

"It's gonna be all kinds of fun anyways, let's just go watch Karkat's movie. I bet the flick is as motherfucking miraculous as motorboating a fucking ninjette's wicked titties."

"Ugh." Terezi makes a face at Gamzee's choice of words, but you try to stifle a laugh.

"What time should we meet up?" Nepeta says.

"How 'bout… 6 PM?" Gamzee doesn't look too sure, but you guess it's a good enough time.

"Right. Everyone pays their own tickets." Karkat says with a tone of finality, and you swear you see a satisfied smile on his lips for a split second.

* * *

><p>You arrive at Karkat's house far too late. Gamzee was the one driving (since he had asked Kurloz if he could borrow the car), but that wasn't the actual reason for your lateness. It had been your father's fault, who had forced your clown friend to stay and eat an early dinner with you before heading out when he picked you up from your own place. Maybe your dad found him too skinny, maybe he just didn't want his deliciously fresh food go to waste. You decide to not dwell on it; the damage was already done. He just didn't know how to take 'no' for answer.<p>

"Way to fucking go, shitsponge, it's almost 6 PM already and the trip takes at least 20 fucking minutes from here!" The small boy basically yells, baring his teeth to seem intimidating, or so you think.

"Hey motherfucker, chill your titties." Gamzee gets off the car at the same time as you do, and walks up to Karkat before bending a little to pick up the guy to hug the life out of him.

"Goddammit, let me go right this instant you disgusting, unwanted spawn of your dad's filthy broken condom!" but Gamzee doesn't let go of him, and instead twirls him around as if to make him even angrier on purpose. "Fucking-!" You can see Gamzee kiss his cheek repeatedly as you stand there awkwardly, and that's when Karkat starts to kick him and attempt to elbow his stomach until Gamzee finally sets him free. You doubt he did much damage, though, from the way Gamzee begins to chuckle. "Fuck you. I better not get herpes or some shit, or I swear to fucking God, I will fucking shove every last one of your ridiculous juggling clubs up your ass, leaving room for your even more ridiculous monocycle." Gamzee crinkles his nose and walks towards the car, opening the back door for Karkat.

"Come on bro, don't be like that."

"Just… Hurry up." He says, and you jump into the passenger's seat again, pursing your lips at the little show they had put up. You wonder if maybe Gamzee is keeping something from you, regarding Karkat. You wonder if maybe he has a thing for him, or they have a thing, since you have a hard time remembering if you ever knew a couple of friends that were so physically affectionate with one another. Maybe that's just Gamzee being Gamzee, overly touchy and even oblivious to the concept of personal space, but you have a feeling there's something more. You find yourself wondering about that until you arrive to your destination, not really picking up on their conversation even when Karkat realized he had a grey smudge on his face and began to yell at Gamzee. You're not even sure why you care.

When you find your little group, you realize that there are two new people you know, but hadn't expected to see today. Feferi, who's sporting a pretty fuschia dress that was easy to spot from miles away, and Eridan, a guy you aren't too fond of since he is a little mean, but you guess is okay.

"Hi!" The girl greeted you three, and the guy waved weakly before fixing his glasses and looking away. You have a feeling he is trying to look interesting.

"I invited Equius too, but he had soccer practice today." Nepeta informs you when you walk to her side. They both play soccer together, and are rather good at it, but they're in different teams and have practice on different days most of the time. It's a shame that she wouldn't get to hang out with him today, seeing as they barely saw each other nowadays; he doesn't even go to your school anymore.

Your group headed straight to the movie theater, loud chatter all around you as everyone engrossed themselves in different conversations. You all bought tickets for 7:30, and decided to walk around for a while and get Sollux's CD's and hit a few stores to pass the time.

Half of you decided to go inside a clothing store that looked pretty big, while the rest waited outside on a bench to keep on chatting. You went straight to check out some jeans in the men section, since you need new ones, and Gamzee tagged along, him being the only other guy besides you and Karkat that decided to check out some clothes as well.

You decided on three pairs of jeans after looking around for a while, and Gamzee quickly grabbed a handful of random clothes that were sitting by the changing room before quietly deciding to abandon Karkat and follow you inside a small room, instead of getting his own.

You feel a little weirded out at Gamzee when he pushes his way past inside without permission from you, and maybe even a bit embarrassed, but he makes absolutely nothing of it. He instantly changes to a huge black T-Shirt that makes him look even skinnier than normal.

"Whatcha think? Should I buy it?" He jokes, or at least you think so. You crinkle your nose anyways and shake your head with a chuckle. He shrugs and takes it off, and this time you take a peek at his naked torso. Damn, his skin has never seen the light of day. You look away and focus on putting on one of the most promising jeans, and you glance back at him when he begins to laugh increasingly loud. You cover your mouth in time to catch a burst of laughter when you see he has put on a really short skirt and a pink tank top, that said "Sugar momma" on the front with glitter letters, which also left his stomach visible. You just now notice he has a purple ring on his navel, and you think it just tops off the look.

"I look like a motherfucking hooker, man." He jokes again, and you nod despite thinking it's not all that devious, really. It's a lot more girly than anything. He twirls around to let the skirt flutter, being careful to not trip over his naked feet, revealing even more of his enviable long legs covered in thick, black hairs. He ends up giving you his back and looking at you over his shoulder dramatically, popping his hip with one hand on his waist. "Would you all up and pay for me, motherfucker?" You let out a laugh and take off your jeans to try on another pair.

"I don't think, buying those clothes is a good idea, Gamzee." You tell him, and he begins to laugh softly.

"That's not what I meant." You look at him and see smirk on his face, and your face gets hot. Oh.

"Uh…" You know it's just a stupid joke, but you still feel strange buzzing in your stomach and your face burn lightly. You decide to force a mocking snort before replying with a joking tone of voice. "Oh, sure. Those curves of yours, sure are, tempting." He let's out a laugh and punches your shoulder before starting to strip again. He throws the skirt and the tank top on the floor, and you look at his body up and down, not being able to stop yourself. No curves there; Just sharp, bony edges. You meet his face again and realize that he was staring at you, and you feel caught. You feel your face get hot yet again, and you decide to hurry up and put on your actual pants. "We should, get going." You say, and he nods straight away.

"Don't wanna be all up and late to Karkat's movie."

He gets dressed rapidly and follows you out, and you see a lady sitting there, by the entrance of the changing room. She looks at you over, then at Gamzee, and her face becomes an open expression of disgust. She takes a moment before replying as she receives your clothes.

"Only one person per cubicle." She says with a flat tone, and gives Gamzee a funny look. You see him shrug and smile.

"Sorry sis, didn't know." She points at a sign on the wall that says the same thing, even with the same exact words. He shrugs again and just walks away, and you mutter an apology. You don't even want to know what she was thinking.

You meet up with Karkat over in the men's section again, finding him hunting down for a decent pair of shoes that were his size, but that also weren't for little kids. He was starting to get angry, and had even snapped at a worker that had nothing to offer except for a pair of Iron Man themed Sneakers. The guy had scurried off with the shoes in his hands and an annoyed expression, promising to come back with another more "manly" pair from storage. You doubt he would return at all. You also don't see the problem with the Sneakers, but you guess it's some sort of pride thing. They were of a brand specialized for little kid's shoe wear after all.

"Fucking douchesquatting moron! Did you see the look he gave me?" He spun around to look at Gamzee with an offended glare. Gamzee shrugged with a chuckle before ruffling the smaller guy's hair, earning him an angry grunt. "Fuckstain." The insult was directed at the worker once again as he looked after him, even if he was not visible anymore. "You know what, fuck it. These shits aren't even worth the money anyways." He began to walk away, expecting you two to follow him.

You make a left down the aisle towards the women's section, to see if you can find the girls and get out of the store. You look over the racks of clothing to find Nepeta, and as you scan the area with your eyes, you notice there is a tall guard following you. You frown, but decide to not make anything of it as you keep on walking, not yet calling out her name. You hear Gamzee chuckling a few feet away from you, and you turn your head to see what he's up to. You find him standing in front of a jewelry display, putting one necklace after another around his neck.

"Gamzee." You say as you get closer, a wide, amused smile on your face. "What, are you-"

"Here." He grabs your hand and pulls it close to him, and quickly puts a golden ring on your left ring finger. You look at it and lift an eyebrow. "Friendship ring." He shrugs, giving you a half smile. "Honk!" You take a moment before beginning to laugh, but you soon attract enough attention like for Karkat to make his way towards you and see what he was missing.

"Goddammit, you fucking cocklicker, get that shit off!" He scolds Gamzee when he sees him, and quickly begins to help him in the task of lifting the necklaces over his head.

"Aw, come on, bro." He protests, but lets the smaller guy help him by bending down a little bit. You look at the ring on your hand for a moment, seeing the cool, shiny surface sparkle as you move it around. You take it off before Karkat scolds you too, even if you aren't sure if he would do that, and put it back where Gamzee had taken it from.

"That asshole over there has been following you around the whole fucking time, I don't want him to grab your skinny ass and search you or some shit." Gamzee takes off the last of the golden necklaces and looks to the side, spotting the guard. You see him too, and the man makes no effort to disguise the superior glare he's giving Gamzee. You look at Karkat and back to the guard standing by one of the clothing racks, out of earshot.

"...Why?"

"Just shut up, come on." Karkat grabs Gamzee's hand, grabbing him as he walks towards the exit. You hesitate before following, feeling a little ashamed of yourself when you strain your ears to hear what Karkat hissed at Gamzee. You weren't able to hear a thing, but Gamzee replied louder, almost offended.

"But I don't do that shit no more, bro!"

"Whatever."

You purse your lips as you keep your eyes on their back until Karkat releases Gamzee's hand, coming up with a lucky guess of what that was about.

You get out of the store and find the rest of the group waiting on you, and you quickly leave in the direction of the movie theater. You, Nepeta, Gamzee and Karkat decide to get some popcorn and sodas, and you buy Gamzee some skittles after hearing him say that he wished he had brought along more money. You stand in line only for a few minutes before heading down the hall and entering the theater, and all of you take a seat in the same row.

Sollux sat at the very edge, and Aradia took a seat besides him to your surprise. Eridan took a seat besides Aradia, forcing Feferi to sit right next to him, to which she replied with an "Eridan!" before obliging; he was her date after all. Karkat sat right next to Feferi after eyeing Sollux for a moment, and Nepeta took a seat before anyone else could. Terezi plopped down by her side, which meant you and Gamzee would have to seat near the middle of the row. You sat by Terezi, hearing Gamzee sigh after letting himself fall on his own seat besides you, soon giving you an excited grin.

He opens up his bag of skittles straight away, holding the bag to you so you would make a cup with your hands to receive a fair share. He hesitates before giving you a playful look, and quickly reaches down to steal all of the purple skittles from your hands, popping them in his mouth one by one. You chuckle at that and let him have his way, watching him chew away his candy. He then takes some more out for himself, a lot of them being of your favorite flavour.

"The orange ones, are mine." You say with a grin, and he picks one up with his fingers before lifting his hand to you, pressing the small candy against your lips. It takes you by surprise but you let him feed it to you anyways. He cups his hand and serves himself the rest, and lets you pick out all the other orange ones.

The commercials begin and drag on for a few minutes, giving enough time for the rest of the people to get inside the theater. The movie soon begins, with the classical atmosphere of a Romantic Comedy being set in with the happy, almost cute music. You guess it doesn't look that bad. It's not your favorite genre, but it's alright. You glance over at Karkat when Gamzee looks over you to look in his direction, and you see the usually grumpy guy with a smile plastered on his face. You giggle at that, and Gamzee giggles along before going back to the movie.

You think you can pinpoint the exact moment in which Gamzee lost all interest. He begun to jump on his seat slightly, looking around as if he wanted to distract himself. He began to lift his leg up and down, but stopped when you put a hand on it to stop it, since it was beginning to annoy you. He looked over his shoulder to the back of the movie theater, and soon shoved his mouth to your ear to whisper.

"Fuck, bro, those motherfuckers are fucking!" You press your own lips together in a tight line and resist the urge to look, but you give in to the curiosity and look over your shoulder. You see some people that are closer to your seat absorbed in the movie, but you finally spot the couple on the back. On the very last row. They aren't exactly fucking; it's more like, the girl giving the guy a little favor with her face below his waist.

"Oh, God." You mutter and look at Gamzee in horror, but he is chuckling and biting his lips, completely amused by it. "I didn't, want to see that." You inform him as you breath out a laugh, and attempt to go back to the movie. Gamzee does the same after a moment, probably trying to pick it back up, but he soon gets bored again.

He grunts and begins to rub his neck until you ask him what's wrong, and he replies with a pitiful look and a simple "my neck hurts". He doesn't ask for permission to do the next thing that pops into his mind, and he just lays his head on your shoulder and nuzzles into you, crossing his arms over his own chest. His hair tickles your neck and face, and you notice it smells really good, and even feels kind of soft. He obviously washed it before going out.

He eventually lets his arms fall to his lap again, and he reaches out a hand to cup yours. You look down, a little startled by the action, and he begins to rub the pad of his thumb over each of your nails. He has a habit of doing that now when there is nothing better to do, and you didn't really mind. You guess it just feels kind of nice to him. But then he goes ahead and just lets his hand rest on yours for almost a full minute before slowly beginning to entwine his finger with yours, and you feel as if he is hesitating. You let him do it, your stomach tightening, and you have no idea if you want to pull away or stay like that.

You forget about the movie completely while your eyes are glued to your hands, watching as his thumb begins to rub against your skin softly. You want it to stop. You're not sure why he is doing that, but you can't pull away.

He shifts his head a little to look at you, still resting on your shoulder, and you can't move as he stares at you with a mostly serious expression on his face. Your phone begins to buzz and you pull away your hand instantly, moving away from him more than necessary to pull out your phone from your pocket. It's a text from your father, who felt the need to remind you that you have a curfew.

You close the message and turn off your phone, and you see Gamzee try to peer at the screen unsuccessfully. You're halfway glad that the movie is almost done.

Once the credits begin to roll, you all make your way out of the theater, the light from the hallway blinding you momentarily. It's well past 9:30 by now, and Feferi excuses herself saying something about her having to travel early in the morning. Eridan says goodbye and leaves with her, getting a free ride while he was at it. The rest of the group agrees that it's time to eat something, and you all head down to the food court in the mall.

You and Gamzee don't feel hungry since you both already had dinner at your place, so you both decide to buy big cones of ice cream. The rest buy some burgers and fries before sitting at the biggest table you all could find, and begin to eat in between silly commentaries of the movie.

"Can I taste it?" You look at Gamzee and at his pistacho cone with a small smile, and you peer at your own ice cream cone before stretching out your arm over the table to let him taste it. He leans in and takes a big lick off of your soy vanilla ice cream, and licks his lips over for a moment. "... Ain't all that bad like like I all up and thought it would be." He admits with a grin, and you let him take another lick before pulling it back to you. "Here, taste this miraculous shit." He offers, but you shake your head.

"No, thank you. It has-"

"Oh, milk, shit." He pulls it back to him and takes a bite rather than a lick. You nod, glad that he actually remembers and hadn't thought you liked soy without a specific reason. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine, actually." You assure him, chuckling at the excess of green ice cream staining his grey painted lips. He chuckles along, and just continues to eat.

The group dissolves after eating, each person saying their respective goodbyes and going their own ways. You follow Gamzee and Karkat to the parking lot, hearing the smaller boy rant endlessly about how "fantastically genius!" the movie had been. Gamzee nods and chuckles as he tries to look as if he is listening, but you can see right through him. Karkat seems determined to get Gamzee to learn a thing or two from the movie, though, so he pushes you aside to prevent you from getting into the passenger seat, saying it was "his turn", and as soon as he is inside, he resumes where he left off. You can tell Gamzee isn't all that happy about that, but asides from a yawn or two that he manages to hide from Karkat, he doesn't show any other signs of boredom. You look at him through the rearview mirror the whole time, catching the glances he shot your way that made you giggle every time from how desperate he was for another conversation topic to be brought up. He would just shake his head and chuckle along, but Karkat made sure to ignore it.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorry for the lateness guys, I had to rewrite this chapter two times before deciding on going with this third version. I hope you enjoyed it! Next one is coming up sooner. Way sooner. Like, tomorrow. <strong>


	5. Chapter 5

Gamzee is lying on his back on top of the soft grass, taking long drags of the weed joint between his lips that he had fixed himself when you two got to the park. The place is big and nice for the area it's set it, with some happy dogs running around after each other as their owners yell at them to stay still, and tall, green trees scattered all over the area to provide shade. you decide that it's pretty enough like to visit it again sometime, if Gamzee is okay with that; it's close to his house anyways.

He finishes the smelly thing and puts it off on a patch of dirt by his side before leaving the remains right there. You are considerably glad that he's done, since you don't really like the smell of weed, and you don't entirely approve of his bad habit. You, of course, keep this to yourself.

He is quiet while you rip out a few blades of grass and throw them at his belly, his breathing calm and slow as he stares at the leaves of the tree you're resting under.

"We better get up and head home, motherfucker, I gotta get everything ready for a wicked small get together we're gonna get having. Can't all up and have no shit done for tonight." He says out of the blue, and you frown after a few seconds. He hadn't mentioned anything about that.

"What, do you mean, 'get together'?" You shift by his side to be able to look at his face a little better.

"Oh, it's thing for Kurloz. It's the motherfucker's birthday today, and me and Meulin thought it would be motherfucking bitchtits to fix him up some kind of little wickednasty celebration or some shit, just us." He says with a small shrug, and you nod.

"...Okay. Sounds, fun. Tell him I say happy birthday, then." You smile, twisting a blade of grass around your finger before ripping it off.

"Naw, motherfucker, you're coming with me." You arch your eyebrows in surprise.

"Oh, um, I wouldn't want to be a bother, actually… It's a family thing, after all, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you're practically family too bro, like Meulin, ya know?" He flashes you a sweet grin, lifting a hand to brush off the grass resting on his stomach thanks to you.

"... Wow, thank you." You feel a tinge of pride inside you as you chuckle quietly. That had been really nice to hear. "But, I don't think it's the right thing to do, for me, I'm sure I'll just be a bother…"

"Don't fucking say that bro, you'll never be a motherfucking bother to this here motherfucker." He sounds serious as he looks up at you.

"Alright…" He stands up right away and helps you up to your feet with his hands, as if your words meant you were okay with going after all. That was not what you were going for, but you decide to not fight against his will. You had nothing better to do anyways, being a typical boring Sunday.

"Better hurry the fuck up." He begins to walk towards his house as he drags you along by the hand, and you try to keep up with his pace with your shorter legs. "But you gotta help me out!"

You get to his house in no time, and he goes straight to the kitchen to clean it up and get ready to cook. You take the initiative to help him with the few dirty dishes resting inside the sink, and you both finish rather quickly; the kitchen isn't very big anyways, so there's not much that can get dirty.

He asks you if you are any good at cooking so you can help him out, saying that he's "pretty fucking dope" at pastry but at nothing else. He says he's going to prepare the cake he hadn't baked yesterday out of fear of Kurloz seeing it, and makes puppy eyes at you so that you agree to be the cook. You were actually going to help him out anyways. You assure him that you're a relatively good cook, since your father has always loved to prepare new, elaborate dishes, and he has taught you enough tricks like to make something delicious and quick. He warns you that Kurloz is a huge meat eater, and you hesitate several moments before giving in and deciding you would prepare the frozen chicken that you saw stuffed inside their fridge. You wouldn't eat a single piece of it after all, so you guess you can do this, if it's for Gamzee and the rest. You take your time to prepare a wide variety of salads too, mainly for yourself, assuring Gamzee that they will taste good too.

You are completely absorbed with the task of peeling some tomatoes when Gamzee calls your name, and you turn to see what he wants. But you are greeted with a hand covered in flour, dangerously close to your face.

"Wait, what-" His hand covers your face completely, shutting you up, and he rubs it around your tan skin until he is satisfied with the result. "Gamzee!" You scold him, wiping the flour off your mouth before you lick any of it accidentally, and he begins to honk loudly. You narrow your eyes and pick up the potato peels, the tomato peels, and some discarded lettuce to begin to throw them at him in revenge. He runs to the other side of the small kitchen, covering his face with his arms, and you stop with your aiming practice to clean your hands in the sink and wash your face thoroughly. You hear him laughing at you for a while, but he soon goes back to focusing on preparing the cake.

You both make a complete chaos of the kitchen as you finish cooking, leaving flour, dough, chopped lettuce and tomato peels everywhere on the counters, but at least everything is mostly done. The salads are ready to be spiced up, the cake is baking in the oven and the chicken is slowly cooking in the pot, emitting an aroma that you really wish you could get away from.

You decide to clean up for Gamzee again while he goes off to rest on the couch, seeing as he looks a lot more tired than you feel. It turns out to be a bit tedious, but you guess it's your duty seeing as you are the guest and it's just bad manners to leave a mess, no matter the circumstances. Or so you have been taught.

You wipe the sheen of sweat off your brow and step towards the living room once you're done to see what Gamzee is up to, and you see him sprawled on the couch, his legs hanging from the armrest, his breathing shallow and his eyes closed. You walk over and look down at him, deciding to move his legs to sit down. You manage to sit on a small, crowded space, and you let his legs stay right how they were, but resting over your thighs. He soon chuckles low in his throat before opening an eye to look at you.

"Was I out for long?" He mumbles in a drowsy voice.

"Not, really… I doubt it was more than 20 minutes." You say, and he nods before closing his eyes again.

"The cake's gotta be all up and ready in like, half an hour." He says. You nod despite knowing that he cannot see you, and you let your head rest on the backrest of the couch. You let out a long yawn of your own, considerably tired for being on your feet while cooking for the past hour or so.

You barely begin to close your eyes when you hear the front door swing open. Oh, shit. Kurloz is already home.

You turn your head to look at him lazily, and your eyes widen when you see a man you have never seen before in your life stand by the door. He is tall, really tall, with wide shoulders and thick, black hair as long as Kurloz'. The look of disdain he gives you when he spots you makes you unable to say a word. You feel Gamzee start to sit up, and you turn your face to look at him instead. The look of both surprise and concern makes you uneasy.

"What are you doing here?" He says probably before thinking, all traces of sleep gone from his voice, and the man snorts. You hear his heavy footsteps walk across the small living room towards the kitchen, and he enters without answering. Gamzee gives you a rapid, sharp look before jumping to his feet, and he walks towards the kitchen rapidly. You stay in place, only turning your body towards the entrance of the kitchen from your spot on the couch, but you're unable to see inside. You can only hear their conversation. "I said what are you fucking doing here."

"This is my house." The man has a deep voice that instantly reminds you of Gamzee, but there is a thick, foreign accent present on it that is impossible to miss. "The fuck do you think I'm doing here?" You can hear the refrigerator being opened. There is silence, but Gamzee speaks again, a little lower.

"You gonna stay? It's Kurloz' birthday." You hear another snort.

"He's too old to be celebrating that shit."

"So, no." The man grunts, and you hear a bottle of soda open. You take a lucky guess that he's the one drinking it. "You're a motherfucking piece of shit of a fucking father, you know that?" You flinch at Gamzee's words. You would never, ever, say such a thing to your father. You are so very certain that this man, who could be called a way older version of Gamzee himself, has to be his father. You realize that maybe you are in no position to compare at all. You suddenly feel so very uncomfortable.

"Watch your mouth, bitch."

"Or what?" Gamzee raises his voice with defiance. "Motherfucker, you don't give a single shit about us both, and I'm fucking fed up of that shit. You don't even come here no more, this is gotta be the first motherfucking time I've seen you in hell of a lot of weeks. You ain't our father no more." He keeps raising his voice. "I don't got no understanding why you think you can all and just come inside here, you don't any right to-"

"Shut the hell up you goddamn fuck, I work my ass off for you worthless pieces of shit, and you don't got any right to be motherfucking telling me what I can or can't motherfucking do."

"Bullshit, you son of a bitch, you don't never leave behind a motherfucking dime for us, Kurloz is the one what had to get a goddamn shitty ass job to pay the motherfucking bills, so don't be throwing such motherfucking lies all onto my fucking face! You can fuck off." You hear the man stomp towards the living room again, and the first thing you see is the sharp, horrible glare that stabs you. It terrifies you, freezes your blood in your veins. And the look on Gamzee's face when he steps out of the kitchen is nothing different.

"You're asking for it." The man warns in a lower, dangerous voice, and your breath hitches. But Gamzee laughs.

"I ain't afraid of you no more, motherfucker." The man turns on his heels, his fists clenching and unclenching, a low growl escaping from his throat. You gasp when he lands a hard punch on Gamzee's face, making him stagger and press a hand against the spot immediately. You stand up from the couch, not knowing what to do, briefly wishing you weren't there. Gamzee groans, his glare lifting to look at his father again. You can hear a deep, animal-like growl growing in his own chest, pure rage becoming verbalized. You hesitate, not wanting to get between them, not wanting to get hurt, but once you're certain that Gamzee is about to throw himself on the man as if he has a remote chance of winning the fight, you run over to him and grab his arms to restrain him from behind.

"Gamzee, no!" You say, your eyes fixed on the intimidating man. "Gamzee." He is fighting against you, pulling his arms away, focused on his target. "Please, calm down." You fear getting too close to him, even from behind. He is so strong. Too strong. "Gamzee." You repeat, and feel his struggle getting weaker. Your heart is racing. The man is just standing there, watching you with disdain.

Gamzee stops fighting. He suddenly jerks away from you, and walks past you into his room, and slams the door loudly once he steps inside. You are left there to stand before the tall man. You force yourself to move, and try to step back towards the couch again, hoping to get away from his glare. He turns and leaves towards a room down the hall that you haven't seen neither Gamzee nor Kurloz ever open, and he gets inside without closing the door, emerging only moments after. He has different clothing on when you see him again, and has a small bag in his hands that he is trying to zip up as he walks towards the front door.

He stops right before getting out of the house, doorknob in hand, and glares at you again. He sneers, and then speaks.

"_отвратительно педик_." He says, and you have no idea if you even recognize the language he is speaking. He leaves immediately after, slamming the door as well.

You stand there for a minute once he's gone, almost in shock. You hadn't expected this to happen at all. You don't understand, can't understand what just happened. You take your phone out of your pocket to check the time and decide to turn off the oven and take the chicken out of the fire. You drink a tall glass of water before getting out of the kitchen, eyeing the unfinished bottle of soda that rests on the counter on your way out, and you hesitate for a moment before placing your hand around the doorknob of Gamzee's door. You heard him lock himself inside the room a few minutes ago, but the lock is broken. He knows that, but you guess the habit just hasn't gone away.

You open the door slowly and step inside the dark room with cautious steps, trying to spot Gamzee in the shadows. You see him sitting on the floor, hugging his legs to his chest. You don't turn on the lights as you get closer to him, leaving the door ajar to obtain some light since the dark purple curtains were drawn. You grab his arm and try to pull him to his feet.

"Come on." You say and sit him on the bed. He doesn't say a word as he avoids your eyes. He lies on the mattress then, giving you his back as you sit down beside him on the bed, his eyes glued to the dirty, grey wall that is littered with silly handwriting from his friends and himself.

There is silence, abnormal, uncomfortable silence that you wish would just go away. You want Gamzee to get up and just be himself, all smiles and jokes. You are selfish. You watch him just lay motionless like that, facing the wall, and all you can hear is your own breathing. You look away to fix your stare on your hands instead.

"Tav." He murmurs suddenly, breaking the silence with the pathetic croak of his voice and you turn your head towards him again. "Can you motherfucking hold me?" The question makes your stomach clench. You haven't heard such a sad tone in his voice before, and you absolutely hate it. You realize that that was probably the very same thing you should have been doing as soon as you stepped inside, instead of sitting there like an idiot, without even saying a single comforting word.

Your body moves on the bed until your back is resting against the wall, and you help him sit up carefully. He crawls closer to you, his arms stretching out towards your body and he quickly wraps his long arms around your torso almost desperately. He buries his face on your neck and hugs you tightly, his breathing hot against your skin. Your arm snakes around his body to keep him close, feeling his grip on you tightening even more. You then feel him start to shake from his soft sobs. You press your lips into a tight line and let your head rest against the wall.

"It's okay…" You whisper, not sure what to say. You never were so good at comforting people. Now that you think of it, you can't even remember the last time you saw a friend like this, vulnerable as can be. "Don't cry, it's okay."

"No it isn't." His voice is thick with his crying. You decide to just rub his back, and not say any more to avoid fucking up.

He cries in the crook of your neck for a few minutes, his hiccups slowly dying down over time. And you keep on rubbing his back, feeling your palm burning slightly from the friction of your skin against the thin fabric of his T-shirt.

"... Are you, feeling any better?" You whisper after a while, and feel him nod against you. He takes a deep, shaky breath.

"Yeah. Thanks." He murmurs, and you feel his hold over you tighten a bit more since it had become rather loose at some point during his crying.

A quiet minute passes before he lifts his face slowly to meet your eyes. His own eyes are red and puffy, and his face paint is smudged beyond fixing. There are thin, dim trails of naked skin from his eyes to his jaw, and a clean spot on his cheek where he had pressed it against your shoulder. You feel pity pooling in your stomach and weighing you down, and you think that if you weren't hugging him already, you would be dying to.

He lets his eyes fall from your face, and you suddenly realize that he is getting closer to you. Your eyes widen when you feel his dry, painted lips press against your cheek softly, his nose exhaling hot air on your skin.

"Thanks." He murmurs again and stays still for a moment, his eyes closed and his nose against you, just breathing. You swallow thickly, and lick your lips with a frown growing on your face. You feel the tip of his long nose rub softly against your skin for a moment, and then it travels across your cheek, bringing his lips closer to your own. He presses another sweet kiss on the corner of your mouth, making your breath hitch and your heart skip a beat. This is wrong. Your stomach just became a knot. His lips begin to brush their way across your mouth slowly, parting slightly against yours, letting you taste the air he is exhaling for only a mere second, and you move your face away from him to avoid the kiss as quickly as you can. You gulp and wait for him to move, your eyes fixed on the dark wall and facing away from his face.

He lets his head rest on your shoulder again, and he lets out a deep sigh.

"Shit bro, fucking cake is gonna get itself all up and burnt." He says with a short, breathy laugh, sounding oddly natural.

"It's fine, actually. I turned off the oven, before coming here. But now you have to, decorate it, I guess." You chuckle, trying to add some normality. You don't want this to be awkward. You don't care that a certain thing most definitely almost happened. You don't want to think about it. You want to keep your friend, since he's the best friend you have ever had, and you aren't planning on losing him because of a kiss that insinuated feelings that you are not sure you can share, that didn't even happen.

"Damn, that's right. Kurloz' gonna be here any fucking minute now, and Meulin's gonna be all kinds of disappointed if all this shit ain't all up and done." He chuckles too, and you give him a smile that you're sure he can see despite the dark when he leans away and lets go of you. He gets on his feet and stretches, letting out a grunt. "Imma get my face all cleaned up." He says, and quickly leaves the room to lock himself in the bathroom for a couple of minutes.

He gets out of the bathroom with a freshly applied coat of makeup that replaced the messy mask of smudges and salt. His eyes are red and still a little puffy, but the makeup does its job and hides any other evidence of his crying.

"Um…" You realize your shirt is smeared with his makeup on your shoulder when you find yourself in the bright light of the kitchen, and he does so too.

"Aw, fuck." He chuckles. "Want me to let ya borrow one of mine?" You shrug as you consider it, but he goes off to his room again, quickly coming back with a purple shirt with a logo of some kind of horrorcore band you don't really know anything about. "Here ya go." He hands you the shirt, and goes off to the oven to get the cake out. You stand there for a moment, looking it over. You decide to just put it on right there in the kitchen, and you find it's rather loose around your body. You guess the shirt is just too big for Gamzee anyways, since you are definitely wider than he is.

You throw your dirty shirt on the brown couch from the entrance of the kitchen, and get ready to check out the chicken and prepare some rice you totally forgot about making to go with it.

Gamzee does an amazing job at decorating the cake, using mostly some purple frosting he had made yesterday that he had managed to hide in the fridge from his brother. The cake sports a 'Happy birthday 'Loz' in big letters, and it has some small, purple bones decorating the edges and sides of the cake, with a nice and small addition of a smiley face with a round nose that you guess is supposed to represent a clown smiling on the top right corner. Pretty fitting. Asides from that, he left enough room to put two candles on top of it, each of them a different number. You realize Kurloz is 20 years old, at least a year older than you had expected, even though he is a senior.

You both go back to relaxing on the couch after everything is completely done, and Gamzee goes back to sleep while you try to watch some cartoons and listen to their dialogue over his now loud snoring.

You look down at him and watch him sleep for a moment, chuckling softly at just how deeply asleep he was. He must not have slept so well last night. You think you could slap him across the face, and he would still not wake up this time. You stop smiling when , thought crosses your mind, and you frown as you try to see if his face is even slightly swollen where his father had hit him. You sigh deeply and close your eyes, shaking your head. That had been something you wish would have never happened. Maybe if you had pulled him away before that, he wouldn't have gotten hurt. You wonder if it has happened before. You wonder if it has been worse. You decide you would never ask him, and would instead focus on getting him to smile, because God, had it hurt you to see him like that.

You hear the front door open, and this time you hesitate before looking over your shoulder to see who it is. You find Kurloz walking in, Meulin trailing after him with a large plastic back in one of her hands. He raises his eyebrows at you in surprise, and Meulin is the one to speak.

"It's Tafurros! Hi!" She does this funny walk towards you, both to greet you properly and to leave the bag on the floor near the television. "How are you?" Her loud voice wakes Gamzee up, who covers his eyes with his arm before grunting some curses.

"I'm, uh, okay." You smile at her, and she looks at your lips before nodding and grinning again.

"Awesome. Hey, wake up!" She gets close to Gamzee and pats his chest, and your friend uncovers his eyes to look at her.

"What's up?" He drawls, and his eyes widen for a second as if he remembered he was supposed to be doing something. "Aw, shit." Meulin looks up behind you before crouching down, and she begins to sign something to Gamzee. You guess she doesn't want to be heard by her boyfriend. Gamzee signs back something with a secretive smile, and begins to laugh.

She gets up with a content grin, looking behind you again before setting her eyes on you.

"Isn't that Gamzee's?" She says loudly, pointing a finger at your shirt.

"Uh, yeah, it is…" You look at her in confusion when she begins to giggle and squeal. Your mouth presses into a line when she begins to sign something to Gamzee again, shooting glances in your direction, and you just know she is talking about you. Gamzee whines before responding with a long set of hand movements, and you can't help the frown you give him when he glances at you too.

You see her shake her head with another giggle, and she ruffles his black hair before walking towards the kitchen.

"It's sailing!" She says even louder than normal, and you hear Kurloz' strange version of a chuckle as he disappears into his own room.

"... What was she saying?" You ask as Gamzee gets off the couch with a yawn.

"Nothin'." He says and begins to laugh at you when you give him a glare, not feeling all that happy about being spoken of basically behind your back while you are right there. But he doesn't respond to your question at all, and you decide to just let it drop and enjoy the rest of the evening as much as you can.

* * *

><p>You lie on your bed as you go through the messages on your phone, its screen being the only light source in the whole room. You put the phone aside by your pillow as you sit up, and you take off your pajama pants to sleep in your briefs, feeling the room too hot like to sleep in them. You throw the pants on the floor in time to hear your phone vibrating, and you lie back down to check who's messaging you so late at night on a Sunday.<p>

TC: hEeEeEy MoThErFuCkEr, JuSt WaNtEd To AlL uP aNd BeInG tO sAy GoOdNiGhT.

TC: :0)

You giggle before typing a quick reply, the corners of your eyes wrinkling thanks to your smile.

AT: hAHA, oKAY,

AT: tHANKS GAMZEE,

AT: gOODNIGHT, tO YOU TOO,

You set up the alarm on the phone before stretching your hand to your bedside table and leaving the phone there, sighing deeply before rolling to your side and getting comfortable. You close your eyes and relive the day behind your eyelids: the lazy Sunday morning at the park, the preparation for the small party, and the party itself. You purposely skip the bitter side of the evening, not wanting it to spoil your now good mood.

Gamzee had gotten Kurloz some CD's of his favorite band as a present, and Meulin had bought him an I-pod, that he had reluctantly accepted because he had thought it might have costed too much.

Kurloz had a smile on his face the whole time as he ate your food, and from what Meulin told you, he had suspected you had been the cook since Gamzee was absolute shit when it came to cooking anything that wasn't sweet. You had laughed at that, and Gamzee had stuck his tongue at his brother for the nice words. Kurloz did praise him for the nice, tasty cake, though, and even you had to admit that it surprised you that it was so good.

The rest of the evening passed by lazily as you watched a few funny parodies of scary movies that had all of you doubling over with laughter, and soon it was time for you to get home.

You roll over your stomach on the bed and stretch, yawning loudly. You feel really tired, and you hope that you manage to wake up in the morning. You breathe in deeply, and notice the smell of the shirt you are wearing. It's Gamzee's shirt. You had been too lazy to take it off before bed, thinking that you could always just wash it before returning it some other day, and that it wasn't a big deal since it was really comfortable anyways. You grab the collar and bring it closer to your nose, closing your eyes before sniffing again a few times. You decide on admitting that you really like his scent, and feel just a little bit grateful that you're getting to breathe it now, and also a little bit creepy. But his somewhat pleasant scent takes you back to something you had been viciously trying to avoid thinking about, and you allow yourself to wonder what would have happened if you had let him kiss your lips. You feel your face get hot with the thought, and you try to push it away; but as always, the more you avoid it, the more it comes back to bite you on the ass.

You grunt annoyed at your inability to think of something else, and you just give up.

His imaginary lips feel really, really nice against yours. But you do not like guys. God, is this making you really confused, and even uncomfortable at this point. You wish you knew what the hell he was thinking when he tried that. To you, it was beyond his usual, and now somewhat acceptable touchiness. But you think you are just trying to play dumb with yourself, since you obviously already know what he was thinking, and have known it for quite some time: You know he likes you, or at least you are pretty sure he does. You're usually not very good at noticing these kind of things, but you would have to be an absolute idiot to not notice how much he enjoys your company, and how much he seems to crave it. This kiss that didn't happen was probably his way of telling you he wanted more. And the rejection of it had also been your way of saying 'No'.

You suddenly wonder if maybe you hurt his feelings. There were no words, but the rejection had been really obvious.

You remember that he might have a "thing" going on with Karkat according to your observations, and the reminder feels like a punch to the gut. This makes you at least ten times more confused than before. If he is with Karkat, then he doesn't like you like that, and couldn't like you like that. If he is with Karkat, then what the fuck was he doing trying to kiss you at all?

You press your face against the pillow and groan loudly, frustrated. You jump a little when your phone buzzes again, startling you, and you grab it with a frown.

TC: sEe Ya ToMoRrOw, BrO.

TC: HoNk!

You attempt to be mature about the situation by sticking your tongue at the screen, and you stop yourself before laying it down. You do the next thing solely on impulse.

AT: hEY, i WANTED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING, iF THAT'S OKAY, i MEAN,

AT: uHH,

AT: oKAY,

AT: aRE YOU, mAYBE, dATING KARKAT?

You regret sending that straight away, and you quickly turn off your phone completely to avoid his reply to be received at all. You put it on the beside table and bite your lips anxiously, closing your eyes to summon drowsiness even if it was by force.

You then try your hardest to sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Well. Opinions, criticism, etc are always welcome! I hope you don't mind me adding a little angst... That's just how I roll. Stop me, please.<strong>


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